Thursday, March 31, 2011

'Mona Lisa does not smile anymore' and India n colonialism

http://www.carnegiecouncil.org/resources/transcripts/1033.html
  • In rebuttal of the racial-superiority and Colonial justification arguments of Ferguson I quote from my book 'MONA LISA DOES NOT SMILE ANYMORE' (ISBN 978-81-8465-512-4)
    " No human or animal desire to live in cage or chains. Would the British have swapped development at the expense of slavery under Nazis? It is the primary motive that counts, incidental outcomes there from are of no consequence. British subjugated India and sent Indians as virtual slaves to different islands—from Fiji to Mauritius, to West Indies to South Africa—to work as indentured plantation labour, they occupied an independent country and used its resources and humans in a bland exploitative manner over nearly two centuries. It is not stupid but cunning to justify robbing of freedom of other nations. No religion should make a business of distributing moral righteousness by way of force and temptation to convert. No religion should have had legions of missionary priests disembarking from colonial ships, whose life mission was to convert as many as possible. I think that the introduction of ‘missionary’ priests to convert has close links with the colonialism. Colonialism and religion worked together as a synergy to show the dominant power of the ruler. I ask why the colonizers were all Christians and not Jews, Muslims, Chinese or Indians. The justification came from the material power of the king and the Church. Christianity transformed from a religion of the poor and suffering humanity to that of rich and powerful and Colonialism was a manifestation of it."
    About the 'globalization' Ferguson talks of look up the role of Church in destroying India's culture and religion and I quote from Henry James Coleridge, ed., The Life and Letters of St. Francis Xavier, 2d Ed., 2 Vols., (London: Burns & Oates, 1890), 
    "These children, I trust heartily, by the grace of God, will be much better than their fathers. They show an ardent love for the Divine law, and an extraordinary zeal for learning our holy religion and imparting it to others. Their hatred for idolatry is marvellous. They get into feuds with the heathen about it, and whenever their own parents practise it, they reproach them and come off to tell me at once. Whenever I hear of any act of idolatrous worship, I go to the place with a large band of these children, who very soon load the devil with a greater amount of insult and abuse than he has lately received of honor and worship from their parents, relations, and acquaintances. The children run at the idols, upset them, dash them down, break them to pieces, spit on them, trample on them, kick them about, and in short heap on them every possible outrage."
    Naill Ferguson dreams of replicating such a world. His thoughts will come to grief. No East or West should try to be the fascistic moral godfather of humanity and this applies to all--to emerging China and India, or West or USA.
    For has not the West killed 70 million in II World War and this alone should be the reason enough for West or any among the Rest to not talk of civilizational superiority. One has to be wary, for Hitler was not a person but was an idea that was sold to millions of innate superiority of some in relation to the Rest.


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